BJP must focus on its promises: Residents

DEHRADUN: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) return to power in

Uttarakhand

has come with a whole heap of expectations from the residents. Now, the youth want leaders to focus on higher education and employment opportunities in the Himalayan state along with infrastructural development.

“There is absolutely no monitoring at a collegiate level. Universities have a monopoly on financial matters. It’s time that the government should monitor these issues. We have been writing to elected leaders but no one has come to our aid so far", said one of the 124 final year MBBS students of

Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences

, who were barred from exams after they failed to pay the arbitrarily hiked fees.

Prerna Sharma

, 21, engineering student at

DIT

, told TOI, “The Ukraine crisis has shown that higher education can be cheaper abroad. If measures were taken to make it affordable here, students wouldn’t have to leave. And if more employment opportunities could be generated, people wouldn’t migrate from our state. I know so many of my classmates who have voted for BJP and given it another chance. But it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t deliver. They talk of 24,000 new jobs but there is no implementation in reality.”

Youngsters were also of the view that job crunch was a part of BJP’s manifesto in 2017 and 2022; however, the crisis remains untouched in the state.

Besides, the health care services of the state also remain an area of concern for the residents. “The pandemic has made it clear how much health care needs to be improved. The people in remote corners still don’t have access to basics. Once we have that, we can create more employment and also tackle reverse migration at the same time. The government seriously needs to look at how much improvement needs to be made in the health care sector,” said another city resident.

In its manifesto, the BJP promised a “stringent love jihad law”, but the city’s residents feel the government should rather focus on “development”.